Reliability of microwave SiGe/Si heterojunction bipolar transistors

Author

Ma, Zhenqiang ; Bhattacharya, Pallab ; Rieh, Jae-Sung ; Ponchak, George E. ; Alterovitz, Samuel A. ; Croke, Edward T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Volume

11

Issue

10

fYear

2001

Firstpage

401

Lastpage

403

Abstract

The degradation behavior of NPN Si/SiGe/Si heterojunction bipolar transistors, grown by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), has been studied by accelerated lifetime testing at different ambient temperatures. The degradations of the dc current gain and the microwave performance of the devices are explained in terms of recombination enhanced impurity diffusion (REID) of boron atoms from the base region and the subsequent formation of parasitic energy barriers at the base-emitter and base-collector junctions.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; diffusion; elemental semiconductors; heterojunction bipolar transistors; life testing; microwave bipolar transistors; molecular beam epitaxial growth; semiconductor device reliability; semiconductor device testing; semiconductor materials; silicon; DC current gain; SiGe-Si; SiGe/Si heterojunction bipolar transistor; accelerated lifetime testing; microwave characteristics; parasitic energy barrier; recombination enhanced impurity diffusion; reliability; solid-source molecular beam epitaxy; Degradation; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Life estimation; Life testing; Microwave devices; Molecular beam epitaxial growth; Performance gain; Silicon germanium; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/7260.959308

Filename

959308